IDE incorporates code metrics and MISRA-C code analysis

December 06, 2012 //
By Christoph Hammerschmidt

Swedish software vendor Atollic has released a new version of its integrated development environment (IDE), Atollic TrueSTUDIO v3.3. The IDE offers functions required to develop safety-critical functions. With features such as static source code analysis tools and code complexity analysis, the IDE meets demand from embedded systems designers in the automotive industry.

The analysis and metrics functions contained in the IDE include checking for compliance against the MISRA-C:2004 coding standard and code metrics features such as code complexity analysis. By following the MISRA-C coding standard, developers are more able to tackle the challenges often associated with using the C language and are guided to improve code portability, ease of maintainability and application reliability. Atollic TrueSTUDIO v3.3 follows the MISRA-C coding standard more rigorously than most other tools on the market, ensuring that embedded developers can be assured their code is validated to the highest standards possible. MISRA-C is a programming standard developed by the Motor Industry Software reliability Association (MISRA).

By using the built-in code metrics analysis tools, developers can measure important statistics like code complexity or commenting level of the source code. This empowers developers by providing them with the necessary tools to rewrite and improve their code. For example, reliability and maintainability is typically improved if overly complex C functions are refactored or rewritten into simpler coding style.

TrueSTUDIO also provides a rich GUI for visualization and navigation of the MISRA-C and code metrics analysis results, including a report generator that produces test reports in a variety of popular file formats.

With the IDE, embedded developers have the capability to code, compile, debug and perform source code analysis within a single development environment. Such comprehensive features facilitate a highly efficient and productive environment for embedded developers.

In addition to incorporating the inspection and analysis tools, the software also includes native support for kernel aware debugging of embedded applications developed using one of the world's most popular commercial real-time kernel, Micrium’s uC/OS-III. TrueSTUDIO’s debugger provides docking windows that indicate the internal RTOS state during debugging. This is accomplished providing highly informative windows into task control blocks (TCBs), semaphores, mutexes, timers and more.

Also, TrueSTUDIO v3.3 improves the range of microcontroller targets supported and includes support for many new devices from Energy